How to Increase Your Travel Agency Bookings
11 Simple Ways to Boost Your Travel Agency Leads Right Now
When you began marketing your travel agency you discovered there’s more to it than meets the eye.
You’ve found it’s a lot of work to provide travelers with stellar vacation services. You work on commission, hoping nothing goes wrong with a vacation. Not only do you keep up with clients but you spend hours advertising your business in hopes of generating new leads.
Juggling a business and acting as your own PR is exhausting. With this in mind, I’ve combined some awesome tips to help you advertise with ease and boost your travel agency leads.
Develop a Travel Niche
When marketing your travel agency, it’s important to pick a travel “niche.” There are so many travel agencies out there touting a comprehensive one-size-fits-all travel package. No one has an encyclopedic knowledge of the world. Choosing a specific niche is essential in standing out among your competition.
Your specialty might be destination weddings in Jamaica, tours of Italy, African safaris, or Alaskan cruises. You may choose a general area, like South America or Western Europe. Having a specific niche for your travel agency makes it easier for Google to find you when a prospective client searches online.
Define Your Brand Image
It’s important to define your goals as a travel agent. Allow your unique voice and personality to show through your website, blog, and social media. This gives you clarity of mind to focus on what is important for you and your business.
To help define your voice, personality, and goals ask yourself these questions:
Why did I become a travel agent?
What makes me and my travel agency different from competitors?
Who are some of my competitors?
Is there a travel agency I admire? What can I learn from them?
Creating the perfect name for your travel agency is important for brand imaging. The name should be catchy and reflect your personality and goals. Choose a name that evokes emotion like “Dreamcatcher Vacations” or “Shoestring Travel.”
Become Active on Social Media
I love free stuff. You love free stuff. Who doesn’t love free stuff?
The good news is, social media is a free advertising platform to market your travel agency. You don’t need to pay for Google Ads. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter – they’re all free. Take advantage of them!
Staying active on these platforms is important in maintaining your social presence. Make yourself real to your viewers by showing them what you are doing in your community. Be present – interact with people by responding to comments. Listen to what they have to say. Everyone loves a listening ear!
Maintain Consistency on all Marketing Platforms
You want to succeed, right? Consistency is a key step toward success. Maintaining consistency across all your travel agency marketing platforms gives clients a feeling of security. When they recognize your signature logo or your catchy tagline, they feel a sense of familiarity. “Hey, I know them! They’re awesome people!”
Make sure your marketing platforms (website, Facebook, Instagram) look and sound professional. There’s nothing worse than a tacky website or barren Facebook page. Try to maintain a sense of professionalism, but don’t make it too professional. Clients are drawn to personable travel agent websites and social media pages.
Advertising Your Travel Agency
Everyone who owns a business knows advertising is vital. I already touched on social media advertising, which is an awesome platform for you to air your services. But there are so many other ways to get your name out there and bring in more leads for your travel agency.
If you’re old enough, you might know what snail mail is. Mailing out a good old fashioned newsletter to past clients is a great way to keep your name and memories of the vacation fresh in their minds. The same goes for an email newsletter. Try adding deals that have a 24-hour booking window or an exclusive “customer only” discount to make your email stand out in their inbox.
Make sure your travel agency targets the right travel times in your advertising. As you already know, travel has a high, low, and shoulder season. Having a marketing strategy to keep you visible is essential. Most travelers begin browsing travel options 3-6 months before they make a final decision. If you’re advertising a Disney cruise for June, send out your advertising in January. As the date draws closer, add discounts and deals they can’t resist. Nothing spurs shoppers into an impulsive buy more than a limited time offer!
Make Your Website Stunning
No one enjoys reading a solid wall of text. Try adding compelling visuals from public-domain sites like Unsplash. Pay attention to your successful competitor’s sites. What kind of images are they using?
It’s important to keep your logo, graphics, fonts, and design simple. Avoid swirly cursive style fonts as they often look tacky. Keep your fonts and design sleek, modern, and professional. Your website should be easy to navigate – put yourself in your client’s shoes. Does your menu make sense? When in doubt – simplify!
After you choose the name of your travel agency, add a catchy tagline. For example, if your agency name is “Dreamcatcher Travel” add a tagline underneath it saying, “We catch dreams and make them a reality.” This evokes emotion in travelers by making them see the value in what you’re offering. Once they’re emotionally involved it’s easier to convince them to book with your travel agency.
Inspire your audience to book with you through engaging travel stories, stunning photography, and superior travel tips
Keep a Consistent Travel Agency Blog
Blogs are one of today’s little known marketing tools for travel agents. Providing good information consistently through your blog is a smart way to rank your website higher on Google. Think about it… OozleMedia says 47% of potential clients look at 3-5 pieces of content before deciding to book with you. Agencies with blogs get 67% more business than those who don’t have updated and optimized blogs. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is another key element to send you to the top of Google, but more on this later.
Take a look at these statistics to see why it’s crucial to rank high in Google.
75% of clicks on Google searches are to websites on the first page
Sites that rank number one in a search receive 33% of those clicks
Sites in the top three slots attract almost 60% of searcher’s clicks
There are about 5.5 billion searches per day – that’s more than 63,000 searches every second
This is why you should blog on a regular basis. You need Google algorithms to favor you and you need to stand out from the crowd of non-bloggers.
Add SEO to Your Content
As you read in the blog section, it’s important to rank on the first page of Google, ideally in the top five sites. Posting consistently on your travel blog and making your website visually appealing only goes so far. By adding an SEO keyword strategy you’ll increase your travel agency’s online organic searches significantly. More traffic equals more leads.
According to WebFX, organic search drives more than 50% of all website traffic. That’s more than paid search and social together. This is why implementing an SEO Keyword strategy helps improve your organic search.
Confused? Check this out for some help.
Build Trust With Your Clients
Travel shoppers are often scared to dole out the dough for a big vacation. They have so many questions about what could go wrong. Dispelling fear is a crucial part of gaining a client’s trust. Take the time to really listen to their fears and their dreams. Always have answers. If you don’t know the answer to a question, assure them you’ll research it and get back with them right away.
Being thoughtful in your interaction with travelers is vital to gaining their trust. Use your travel agency’s hotel connections to leave thoughtful touches for your clients. When you book a honeymoon suite in the Maldives for a couple, arrange to have a bottle of wine or a basket of fruit left in the room with your regards. Gift your client a 25% off meal voucher for their hotel restaurant in Vegas.
Always be available to your client. If they call you in the middle of the night because they forgot about the time difference in Switzerland to complain about the hotel’s backed up toilet, you are, after all, basically their personal butler. And remember, the customer is always right.
Referral Rewards
Mankind is more apt to complain than praise. Encourage past and current travel clients to refer your travel agency to their friends by offering referral rewards. This encourages word of mouth advertising, making it your most valuable marketing tool. By offering free gifts or discounts when their referrals turn into bookings incites your travel agency’s client base to spread the good news.
Travel Agent Marketing Tools to Make Life Easier
And for a little bonus section, I’ll interject a couple of online tools to make your travel agency marketing easier.
Mailchimp is amazing for sending out big batches of emails. You can create email templates and landing pages through them. It supports images well and has a nice, modern feel. It’s an essential travel agent marketing tool for growing your leads. And best of all? It’s free if you have less than 2,000 subscribers.
Bookinglayer takes the hassle of booking off your hands. AltexSoft says,
“Bookinglayer provides software for traditional and online travel agencies. It has a user-friendly platform that gives you access to accommodations, activities, rentals, and packages, automatically show prices in different currencies, applies discounts to your loyal customers, and syncs data with Booking.com or Airbnb. Client management also becomes automated and you have a built-in CRM, a customer portal enabling travelers to see information about their departures and arrivals, and update information. It also has an installed payment mechanism with customized surcharges.”
Conclusion
Being proactive, resourceful, and open-minded goes a long way in maintaining your travel agency. Incorporate a few or all of these suggestions to skyrocket your marketing. I know it looks overwhelming, but by following these simple hacks your travel agency is sure to take off.
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